Viewing ‘Guys’ Category

The Love-at-First-Sight Myth

There I was, crunched in a crowd of guys around my locker the first day of school, talking about, well, you know, what guys talk about.  When all of a sudden- in she walked.

“I knew the second she glided into that school that she was the girl for me.  Man, she was perfect.  Blonde hair cascading onto her shoulders, splashing gleams of light into my eyes.  A tan like she just walked off the beach.  A figure that could reduce any seventeen-year-old guy, like me, to a stuttering fool.

“I fell in love.  Love at first sight, right?”  Well, it was for me, anyway.  And, it took a while, but I finally got a date with that vision of loveliness.  Things just kinda happened after that- we were married, had kids, and lived happily ever after.”

Ahhh, that’s how it happens.  True love.  Love at first sight.  Sometimes you can just look at a girl or guy and know that you’ve found your love, your soul mate.

That’s a myth.  Oh, maybe it could happens that way every once in a while.  But it can be dangerous to think that those exceptions typify true love.

We’ve come to think of love as primarily a feeling: a rush of emotion, butterflies in your stomach, stars in your eyes.  But the Bible speaks of love as an action, not simply something you feel, but something you do.

Failure to do that may be why so many relationships fail: because nobody is prepared to work at love.  Nobody thinks you need to water the seed.  Nobody is prepared to weather the storms that threaten to uproot the seedling.  Nobody is willing to tend the soil.  As a result, not many people ever enjoy the full flower of love.

The apostle Paul emphasized the active nature of love when he said, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.”  How did Christ love the church?  ”[He] gave himself up for her…In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”  (Ephesians 5:25, 28-29, emphasis added).

You may still feel the rush of that attraction when the blonde with the tan walks in.  You may swoon when the captain of the football team notices you.   But that’s not love.  It’s exciting, but it’s not the same as actively loving someone and watching that love grow and blossom into a fragrant flower.

Excerpted from Don’t Check Your Brains At The Door copyright 2011 by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler.  Thomas Nelson, Inc. pg. 172-174. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Get your own copy of the book here!